Yesterday I posted about my new pc, one of the things I mentioned is that I use Arch Linux. If you are not familiar with it, there is a meme where arch linux users are stuck up and they like to show off saying "I use arch btw", hence the title.
I've always use Linux on servers, but for desktops I was stuck with Windows for the longest time. I've tried many times in the past to switch to Linux, but it was a really bad experience as a gamer. As a developer, it's always been a pretty good experience, but gaming and developing was only viable a few years ago.
As an nvidia GPU user, the experience was an even rougher ride than if I used AMD. NVIDIA has always used proprietary drivers wouldn't embrace open source drivers. This caused a lot of problems in Linux as they never really gave it their full attention.
Up until about 3 months ago, I still had problems with NVIDIA drivers. 90% of the problems were fixed, and gaming was near perfect, it was just while I was using the desktop I would have issues. For a while I had flickering in games, but this was fixed when NVIDIA supported explicit sync sometime last year. The issue that plagued me the most was one of my monitors would freeze and no longer update, when this happened I could switch TTY terminals and recover if I notice it in time, otherwise my entire system would crash. This would happen anywhere between 5-6 times a week to 3 times a day. It varied update to update. For a while it was really bad, then they fixed it somewhat and it only happened every few days. Then it came back and was happening twice a day. It was the biggest issue I had that wasn't resolved for a long time. I haven't had it in a few months now and I believe it is finally fixed.
HDR was another problem that hit NVIDIA the most, with this being fixed near the end of last year. The problem was in games you had to use gamescope which kind of had it's own issues. A few months ago there were patches into proton that allowed you to use HDR without gamescope and it is glorious (inside joke). Now I can run HDR in games without any problem. I had HDR on my desktop for a while now.
As of this point, most of my outstanding issues are resolved. My PC upgrade went so well, I pulled my NVME out of my old system, put it in my new build and rebooted. Not a single dialog or notice that I had anything to do. I'm back up and running and gaming no problems.
It was the Steamdeck that really got me serious about getting off Windows. I've wanted off windows since Windows 10 was announced and Microsoft went from evil to pure evil. I was tempted to go to Mac OS (via a hackintosh, I wouldn't buy their desktops) but support for Hackintoshing was dying with the new Apple silicon chips and I wouldn't be able to game. I do like Mac OS for productivity though. I was able to run almost every productivity app I use on Windows under MacOS or there was an equally good or better option available.
After Valve released the steamdeck and made so many improvements to proton it was clear Linux was a viable option for gaming and productivity. Finding a distribution though, was a night mare. I formatted my drive and switched OS so many times in a 3 month period. I tried all these distributions during this time.
- Ubuntu
- kUbuntu
- PopOS
- Cinnamon
- Debian
- Tumbleweed
- EndeavourOS
- Nobara
- Fedora
- PikaOS
- Arch
I really liked PopOS, I am not generally a gnome fan but it worked well. I didn't like that they were so caught up making their new desktop environment their updates were slow. I came back to PopOS later on, but eventually left.
I hate Ubuntu for a desktop and the decisions they have made (namely snaps and so on). So I tried kUbuntu which focuses on KDE desktop but it still had issues I didn't like.
Tumbleweed had snapshots which I really loved how integrated it was to the system and updates. I had issues which really bothered me and I moved on.
Nobara is basically Fedora with gaming focused. This was a pretty good experience, but ultimately I wanted .deb package support.
At this point I switched to PikaOS which has common team members. PikaOS is Nobara but uses Ubuntu as core rather than Fedora. This was great, and I used this for a while. One thing I noticed though a lot of drivers would be pulled from the Arch repositories. So I decided to give Arch a try.
Arch instantly clicked with me. I had complete choice of what networking stack I wanted, what desktop system, everything was my choice. I love how the package manager keeps the last installed version on your system so you can always downgrade to previous versions without Internet connectivity. AUR packages is the main draw of Arch, anything that isn't in Arch's official pacman repositories, the community has in AUR. This made supporting .deb packages a non-issue. I ended making hooks in pacman so I would get the snapshot functionality I loved from tumbleweed in arch. Whenever I add/remove a package, I get a btrfs snapshot before and after so I can easily roll back. I also have a hook to save my list of packages whenever I add/remove packages so I have a text list of everything installed in case I ever have to switch or look through it.
What I really love about arch though is it is a rolling release. When KDE updates, it is only a few days before I get those updates. I don't have to wait 3-6 months for the next major release of Ubuntu or something to get those updates. This is another reason I was drawn to tumbleweed.
Almost every software package I ran in Windows is available on Linux. There was very little sacrifice made. As for gaming, 98% of what I play is as simple as buying it on Steam, clicking install, then playing. The only thing I really lose is highly competitive games like Fortnite and Apex Legends which are filled with cheaters anyway.
For a while I maintained a 2TB NVME drive with just Windows and Steam installed in case I had to switch for any game. I haven't done so in around a year now. On my new system, I didn't even move over the drive.
Linux has allowed me to implement a lot more automation easier than I could with Windows. It is just so much easier to do what I want on a regular basis and I am so happy to be out of Microsoft clutches, especially as they start forcing shit like Windows Recall on their user base.
That's my TED Talk.
